


Rodnoy and the Lioness

by ssrhpurgatory



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Mental Link
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:34:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28530780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory
Summary: Soulmates AU where you see your soulmate's life in your dreams and can hear their commentary during your day for The Usual Nonsense.
Relationships: Alexander Hilbert/Original Female Character
Kudos: 1





	Rodnoy and the Lioness

Rosemary Epps had always wanted a younger sibling, so when she was twelve years old, she invented one for herself. She’d always known that her parents weren’t going to provide one for her; they had already been well into middle age when they’d produced her, and by the time she was old enough to go to school, she had figured out that she’d been a surprise to them, and not entirely a welcome one.

Of course, as long as she was smart, and as long as she was good, she had her parents’ pride, and that was almost as good as having their love, she thought. But sometimes, she was lonely; all of her parents’ friends who had children had empty nests by the time she was born, and of course her parents wouldn’t dare let her play with the child of someone they didn’t know. But Rosemary thought that with a younger sibling, she would at least have someone who would face this loneliness with her, who would help her survive this distinct lack of parental love.

So she imagined herself a little brother. Rosemary didn’t know much about babies, and she didn’t think that one would be much fun, but her little brother was perhaps two or three years old, old enough to be walking and talking and asking all sorts of questions. She always did her best to answer them, and when she couldn’t she went to the library and looked up the answers. She had always had a natural curiosity of her own, of course, but having a brother to tell all about her day at school made her even more interested in what she was learning, and so she pushed herself harder, stuffing knowledge into her head as fast as it could be taught to her.

By the time Rosemary reached the end of her high school years, she was at the top of her class and got in to every college she applied to, and her parents were so bursting with pride that she was almost able to forget that they’d never wanted her.

As she grew older, so did her imaginary brother, his age keeping pace with her own from nine and a half years behind. Of course, she had realized by now what he must be. Not a product of her imagination, but her soulmate, her dreams of his life and his voice in her head the result of the bond between them. Perhaps it had been jarring at first to realize that her soulmate connection would be a platonic one, but to a girl whose parents had never treated her as much more than a possession to brag about, that connection was a lifeline.

Sometimes at night she dreamed what his day was like, though she always got awfully jealous when she did, because her soulmate had a large and loving family of his own. Those dreams, the dreams of sitting at the table with his family as they bickered and laughed and loved one another, always left Rosemary feeling unaccountably sad in the morning, and yearning to be loved like that herself.

So it was no surprise that Rosemary sought out love wherever she could find it from the moment she gained some small degree of freedom from her parents. It was even less of a surprise to discover that she so often chose the wrong person, the sort of person who finds someone needy for love and gives them just enough affection to gain their undying devotion in return.

And it was even less of a surprise than that to find that Rosemary’s propensity for loving people who only showed love when they wanted something from her lead to only heartbreak.

There was once in college where she almost gave up, when the embarrassment of going to class and seeing the person she’d opened her heart to and from whom she’d gotten only a pretense of love in return was too much to bear. But to her surprise, for all he was only a child, her soulmate was the one who managed to talk her into staying.

“You can’t stop now,” he’d said. “You’re still learning. I want to learn it too.”

Rosemary had smiled at that voice in her head. “Only because you want to know everything there is to know.”

“ _Yes,_ ” he’d said in return. “And so do you. I can tell.”

Rosemary had laughed at that, and had decided right then and there that she wouldn’t let anything embarrass her ever again. Or at least not enough to prevent her from learning.

She went back to class, and when the young man who had broken her heart made some crack about loose women, she shot back a sarcastic “The women you sleep with aren’t loose, it’s just that you’re so awfully small that it must feel that way to you. Goodness knows I couldn’t tell what you were trying to do down there.”

He had flushed an angry red, and, when the entire class burst into laughter, he left the classroom and did not come back, not that day or any other.

The professor had shouted “Decorum, Miss Epps!” across the room at her, and Rosemary, who had been fighting the urge to clap her hand across her mouth in embarrassment and sink down behind her desk, straightened her spine and fixed the professor with a steely glare across the room, a silent reminder that he’d said nothing to the young man who had started the exchange.

The professor could not meet her eye, and for the first time in her life, Rosemary felt powerful.

Dmitri Vologin had always had a lot of questions about the world around him. His parents always joked that his first word had been “Why?” swiftly followed by “How?” But as much as his family loved him, they swiftly grew tired of his insatiable curiosity. So instead, he imagined that he had an older friend, about the age of his brother Stefan, who was happy to answer every single question he answered. Sometimes at night he dreamed of how the world must look through his friend’s eyes, and he learned what his friend learned. Sometimes he even got flashes of what his friend was doing throughout his own day, and he always thought this must be what people meant when they said they were daydreaming.

Deep inside himself he believed that this friend of his was simply a part of his mind, come to life to make him feel less lonely and disappointed when his older siblings and parents had no time for him. After all, he’d come up with this friend about when Olga had started school and he’d been the only one of the children still at home. Life was less fun without Olga to play with, and his mother only had so much patience with him; she had work of her own to get on with around the house.

So he called this friend Rodnoy, native, home, dear to his heart.

Rodnoy had infinite patience with Dmitri. And if Dmitri ever asked a question that Rodnoy couldn’t answer right away, Rodnoy always went and found out the answer for Dmitri, instead of doing what his siblings always did when they didn’t know the answers, which was to get irritated and wonder aloud why he always asked such silly questions. Rodnoy had an analytical mind that matched Dmitri’s own, and sometimes he asked Dmitri questions back, challenging him, making him think and learn for himself.

By the time Dmitri entered school, he had a reputation as a small child with a remarkably logical and experiment-oriented mind, a reputation that only increased when he started in on higher-level science and math and found most of the subjects were easy, almost familiar. Well, by the time he was nine, Rodnoy, who had kept pace those nine years ahead of Dmitri as he grew, had been taking on more and more difficult classes for years, had started attending college and was learning subjects far beyond the comprehension of most of the teachers Dmitri had encountered, so why shouldn’t the subjects have been familiar?

But of course, if Rodnoy was an imaginary, how _could_ the subjects be familiar? It was a conundrum, and one that Dmitri was not entirely certain how to resolve.

What was more worrying is that he had figured out that the flashes he got during the day of Rodnoy’s life were not how other people daydreamed, that other people did not seem to have an invisible commentator on their life, echoing in their head as they went about living. He’d never talked out loud to Rodnoy, of course; if he had, then perhaps other people might really think he was crazy. It was bad enough that he thought he was crazy all on his lonesome.

For all that she sometimes got annoyed with him and his constant questions, his sister Olga was still his closest friend and confidant, so one night he snuck into the bedroom she shared with their older sister Marya and shook her by the shoulder to wake her up. The two of them crept into the living room and settled side-by-side on the couch under the blanket that Dmitri had pulled off his bed, and he poured his heart out to her, all his worries and fears that the voice in his head meant he was going insane, meant that there was something not quite right with him.

Olga had listened with a frown on her face, and afterwards had thought silently for a few long minutes, then had said, with all the authority that her fourteen years gave her over his eleven, “It sounds as if you’ve got a soulmate.”

Dmitri had heard the word before, but even at the age of eleven, it had always sounded like, well, pseudoscientific nonsense. But Olga was older than him, and knew more about the world of adulthood than he did, so instead of discounting the prospect, he considered it. “Do you believe in soulmates? Really and truly?”

She nodded. “I do.”

“Do you have a soulmate?”

Olga shook her head. “But I have heard that it is different for everyone. Sometimes people only know who their soulmate is when they meet them. But sometimes, if it is a very strong bond, people hear their soulmates before they meet.”

Dmitri frowned. He liked the idea of being an exceptional case more than he liked the thought of being crazy, but the idea of a psychic connection between people who had never met stretched his understanding of human physiology a little further than he was willing to accept. “I think my soulmate is a boy,” he said out loud while he was thinking the scientific ramifications of such a connection over.

Olga shrugged. “Do you like boys?”

Dmitri had never considered the subject. “I do not know. I think I might be a little young for liking anyone.”

“I don’t like boys at all,” Olga said, making a face. Dmitri frowned again, and Olga quickly said, “Not you. But sometimes it feels like every other girl my age is thinking about kissing boys. They talk about it an awful lot.”

Dmitri thought about it for a moment. “Does that mean you like girls?”

Olga blushed so hard he could see it in what dim light was filtering in through the living room blinds. “I think I might,” she confessed.

Dmitri nodded. “Then that’s all right. If you can like girls, then I can like boys,” he said, sounding more decisive than he felt. He was still fairly certain that he was too young to like anyone, but if saying he liked boys made Olga feel better about liking girls when she had obviously never told anyone about it and was embarrassed by it, then he might as well say it.

“Do not tell anyone, all right?” she’d said, and Dmitri had nodded and sworn himself to secrecy.

“As long as you do not tell anyone about Rodnoy,” he said.

“Rodnoy?” Olga had asked.

“My… my soulmate,” Dmitri said.

They shook hands solemnly and promised to each keep the secret the other had told, and then sat there on the couch, talking nonsense with one another, until they both fell asleep.

Their parents scolded them in the morning, for getting up out of bed, for sleeping on the couch. But it had been worth it.

Dmitri now knew he had a soulmate. And some day, some way, Dmitri would meet him.


End file.
